


Parents and Children

by WakeUpDreaming



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Domestic Quintis, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 05:06:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18771799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WakeUpDreaming/pseuds/WakeUpDreaming
Summary: Toby walks into their bedroom, and Happy is broken in a way he's never seen before.





	Parents and Children

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to michaelburnnham on tumblr for the prompt "quintis + h/c? " I hope hurt/comfort is what H/C meant, otherwise this is way angsty for your plan.

He’s very careful. Very, very careful.

“Happy?” he asks, and he comes up to her slowly, like he used to walk about Gracie’s bedroom when she was a baby. 

She doesn’t respond, doesn’t even move from the curled up ball in the corner of their bedroom. She’s absolutely frozen curled into a tight little ball. If he didn't know better, he could think she was a small pile of laundry and not his miserable wife.

“Hap, I heard,” he says softly. “I’m walking over to you now, okay?”

He’s seen Happy in every possible emotion at this point - misery, grief, exhaustion, rage, love, lust, fury. But this...this is new.

Toby slides down next to her. “Ralph took Gracie out for ice cream,” he says quietly, “so we have the house to ourselves.”

She still doesn’t move.

“He’s still here,” he says, “any time you need him, he’ll be here.”

This gets a reaction. “How the hell,” she grumbles, voice slightly muffled by her arms, wrapped in one of Toby’s old hoodies, “will he be here?”

“Because he’s in -”

Happy finally sits up, her eyes red rimmed and wet, cheeks trailed with tears. “If you say he’s in my heart, I swear to god, Toby Curtis, I will walk out and never come back.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Toby says, hands in front of him. “I was going to say he’s in your memories.”

“That’s almost as bad,” she almost growls, and he begins to wonder if he should have just left her in here. Every other emotion he knows how to help, but this? This is all new.

“What did you do?” she asks.

“What?”

“When your dad died,” she says, “what did you do?”

Toby thinks for a minute, just a minute, before he decides that the truth is the only option. “I went out and got hammered,” he replies. “Absolutely shitfaced. And then I blew a bunch of money – still don’t know how much – gambling until I won ten grand and walked away feeling like fucking messiah of poker.”

“You’re a goddamn mess, Curtis.”

“Yeah well,” he shrugs, and wraps his arm around her shoulder when she leans into him, “I clean up pretty good.”

“I guess.” But she snuggles closer until she’s practically in his lap, and he holds her, trying to figure out what the next best step should be.

“Stop psychoanalyzing me.”

“Hmm?”

She looks up, those eyes burning into him. “You’re doing the psychiatrist thing. I don’t need to be psyched. I need you to just…” She frowns, trying to find the words. “I don’t know, be yourself.”

“But myself is a psychiatrist.” He gets a fiery glance in response. “Okay, okay, bad joke. But – would it help to just sit here and say nothing?”

“That wouldn’t suck,” Happy murmurs, but then she rests against him. She’s warm and soft in his hoodie, arms loosely around his waist, and he begins to wonder when the last time she’s been this devastated was. The miscarriage, he thinks. Definitely the miscarriage.

“All I can think of,” she finally says, after too long for Toby to guess, “is that Gracie is going to lose both of us, too. And I can’t –” she stutters, like she’s choking on the words, “I can’t bear the idea that she’ll feel this way someday.”

“I get that,” Toby says, because that idea has been gnawing at him since the day the doctor placed Grace Quinn Curtis in his arms eight years ago. “It’s – it’s too much.”

She nods against his chest. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”

“Hey,” Toby says, pulling back to try and look her in the eye, “sometimes you need to be vulnerable, okay? Grace needs to see that it’s okay to break sometimes, even if you don’t want to. Because some things are worth shattering for, just to let it out.” He presses a kiss to her forehead. “We’ll glue you back together.”

“You make me sound like a plate,” she says, and there’s a hint of a smile in her voice.

“Well, you are a snack.”

That gets him a full on laugh. “Okay, Mr. Funny Guy. Let’s go get our girl.” She sobers up immediately, her face falling. “We’ve got some serious talking to do.”

“We’ve got you, Hap,” says Toby, taking her hand when she offers to help him up, “just like you’ve got us.”


End file.
